What Is Agentic AI For Small Business? Everything You Need to Know

Among the most exciting breakthroughs around artificial intelligence (AI) is agentic AI: a new breed of AI that doesn’t just follow instructions, but acts independently of human input to make smart decisions, and adapts on the fly to solve complex, real-world problems. Maybe you’ve heard of agentic AI and wondered what it is, or more importantly, what it can do for your small and medium-sized businesses (SMB)?

We’ll break down what agentic AI is, how it works, and why it’s helping small business owners like you level up, big. Let’s dig in.

What we’ll cover:

• What is agentic AI for small business?
• Core components of agentic AI 
• Examples of agentic AI for small businesses
• How to get started with agentic AI in your small business
• Challenges for small businesses
• Agentic AI as a growth partner for your small business

What is agentic AI for small business?

Agentic AI is the technology that powers AI agents to operate independently, think, decide, set objectives, and reason with minimal human intervention. This technology provides a comprehensive platform that enables smooth interaction and collaboration between AI agents and humans. It’s equipped with various tools and services, which allow AI agents to learn, adapt, and work together to handle intricate and dynamic tasks swiftly.

You may have heard the term “agentic AI layer.” This layer sits on top of your customer relationship management (CRM) where you keep track of all your customer’s information for sales, marketing, and service. Agentic AI actively uses that data to make decisions and take actions for you. For example, agentic AI systems like Agentforce learn how humans ‌behave and manage diverse and dynamic scenarios.

Agentic AI is that friend in business that will understand your problems (or context), learns from every interaction you have, and then makes decisions just like you would. It’s that intelligent, autonomous AI that goes beyond automation. For example, a chatbot can only answer basic questions, but agentic AI can personalize conversations, or solve problems based on conversations based on each customer’s history. Let’s dive into why this is important to your business. 

Why agentic AI matters for small businesses

The benefits of AI are real, and the agentic layer for your small business simply means – where does it all fit. In fact, 35% of customers would prefer working with an Al agent instead of a person to avoid repeating their concerns. Here’s why you should pay attention to it.

Agentic AI can help you overcome resource constraints. It can handle tasks like answering customer questions and managing invoices.

It can interpret your customer data, schedule meetings, filter emails, and analyze reports to enhance your productivity. It can automate complex workflows like sales, marketing, and customer service. By providing 24/7 customer support through AI agents, agentic AI keeps your customers happy.

Not just that, agentic AI can also boost your sales pipeline by identifying hot leads and personalizing emails to customers who showed interest.

By giving you real-time data insights, AI helps you understand which products are trending, so that you can improve your stock, and identify cost-saving opportunities.

Lastly, agentic AI scales with your business. Whether you need to handle more customers or expand your team, it can adapt to meet your changing needs. You can continue to benefit from its capabilities without additional investments.

Core aspects of agentic AI

Here’s a simple, straightforward explanation of the core components of Agentic AI and how they help growing SMBs and startups tackle everyday challenges:

• Autonomy and adaptability: The agentic AI layer, once trained and customized, operates independently without constant human interaction. It can learn from its environment and adjust its behavior to handle new situations effectively.
• Context awareness: Agentic AI can understand the business environment, customer interactions, and market conditions to make informed decisions.
• Communication: Interact with humans and other systems in a meaningful way, using natural language processing (NLP) and other communication methods.
• Task execution: You can perform multiple chains of tasks simultaneously, such as customer service, data analysis, marketing, and operational management.
• Ethical and legal compliance: It can be operated within ethical and legal boundaries, respecting privacy, security, and regulatory requirements.
• Scalability: Can scale up or down based on the business’s needs, handling increased workloads during busy periods and reducing resource consumption during quieter times.
• Integration: It can be integrated with all your tools inside the agentic AI layer of your CRM. You can integrate it with tools like Slack, Google Docs, or Canva, all in the AppExchange. 
• Continuous learning: AI continuously learns and improves from its interactions and experiences, ensuring long-term effectiveness and relevance.

Examples of agentic AI for small businesses

Now that you know what agentic AI can do for your business, let’s look at some real examples for different areas that you can apply it to:

Marketing automation agents

Marketing automation agents help you design, craft, launch, and ‌optimize your promotional efforts. The agentic layer of your CRM tracks how your ads are performing, predicts the best times to post on social media, adjusts budgets according to insights.

Sales development representative (SDR) agents 

Sales development representative (SDR) agents qualify leads and schedule sales calls for you, among many other things. The agentic AI layer of your CRM can look at who’s most interested. For example, a prospect browsing your pricing page, and then give agent command to schedule an appointment.

Customer service agents

AI agents for service can help you take your customer support to the next level. AI answers customer queries with intuitive intelligence, continuously learning from your customer data. It can resolve basic queries like questions about store hours, return policies, or product details 24 hours a day, seven days a week. And, if the question seems out of scope or urgent, the agent will pass it on to the live support team member.

Personal shopping assistants

Source: Agentforce: Create Powerful AI Agents

Personal shopping assistants are AI agents that can act like a personal shopper for your customers for small retail or ecommerce businesses. It remembers what customers like, suggests products based on past purchases, and even helps them find the perfect gift. So, if you run a small online store, AI agents can help your customers shop faster by guiding them in the right direction and suggesting the best products.

How to get started with agentic AI in your small business

Are you starting to get a feel for the way AI can help you? Agentic AI might sound complex, but it’s actually quite simple. Here are five steps you can follow to get started with agentic AI:

Step 1: Identify time-consuming tasks

Look at your daily workload and find the tasks that eat up your time, but may not need your attention. These could be things like answering basic customer inquiries, scheduling calls, or updating customer information. These are perfect tasks to assign to your AI agent.

Step 2: Choose AI tools made for small businesses

Pick AI solutions that fit your budget and work well with the tools you already use, like your CRM or point-of-sale (POS) system. You don’t need anything complicated or expensive. Look for easy to use platforms that don’t require a tech expert to manage. Here are a few Salesforce AI tools to start with:

• CRM: CRM is the backbone that holds all your customer info, marketing ads, sales data, and service requests in one place, giving you a 360-degree view of your customers.
• Agentforce: Agentforce is an agentic AI layer built right into Salesforce CRM that automates tasks like customer service, and lead qualification that works anytime anywhere. 
• Foundations: Activating Salesforce Foundations gives you the 360 view of your customers by connecting sales, service, marketing, and commerce with the power of conversational AI — Agentforce.
• AI analytics: You can ‌use AI analytics to get visual and predictive insights into the flow of your work. You get a holistic view of your customers data.

Step 3: Start small with a pilot project

The agentic AI layer of your business requires testing and refining. Begin with a small, manageable project, like setting up an AI chatbot to handle common customer questions on your website or automating appointment reminders. This way, you can see how AI helps without overwhelming your team or budget.

​​Here’s how you can start a chatbot pilot in your CRM (Salesforce Agentforce):

Choose your use case

Begin with a simple task like answering common customer FAQs or automating appointment reminders on your website or messaging channels.

Set up Agentforce and Agent Builder

• Log in to your Salesforce org.
• Open Agent Builder to create or customize your AI agent.
• Define topics (like order status) and write instructions.
• Create a library of actions your agent can perform, like scheduling calls.

Configure chat deployment

• In Salesforce setup, create a chat deployment and chat button for your website.
• Link these to your Agentforce chatbot so customers can start conversations easily.

Design conversation flows

• Use Salesforce Flow to design the dialogs your chatbot will use.
• Include welcome messages, question prompts, and escalation paths to hand off complex issues to your team.

Test your chatbot

• Use the Agent Builder’s testing tool to simulate conversations and see how your chatbot responds.
• Refine responses and flows based on test results.

Activate and monitor

• Publish your chatbot and embed it on your website.
• Monitor conversations and customer feedback to continuously improve your agent.

Source: Boost Productivity with Einstein Copilot for CRM

Step 4: Train and customize your AI agents

Once you’ve chosen your AI tool, spend some time feeding it your business data, like customer information, product details, and messaging responses, so it learns about your brand. You can also tweak workflows to fit your team’s process and work style. The better you train it, the smarter and more helpful it becomes. Here’s how you can train your AI agent:

• Import your business data: Add customer info, product details, and past interactions to help the AI learn about your business.
• Use templates: Start with prebuilt chatbot templates and customize conversation flows to fit your style.
• Define intents and keywords: Teach AI to recognize common customer phrases like “order status” or “book appointment.”
• Test and refine: Try out your AI with real or sample queries, then tweak responses based on results. Regularly update your AI with new data and feedback to make it smarter over time.
• Leverage Trailhead modules: Try Trailhead, Salesforce’s free online learning platform’s hands-on “Build an AI Agent with Agentforce” to guide setup and training.​

PRO TIP: Train your bot with basic tasks like answering queries first. AI chatbot tools like Agentforce integrate easily with your website and CRM and you can train them with your customer data. Use actual customer questions and past interactions to teach your chatbot how to respond. 

Step 5: Monitor performance and expand gradually

Your agentic AI layer of your CRM will be monitoring its performance, but it’s up to you to refine and iterate on improvements. Use AI analytics to measure its performance through customizable dashboards and reports. Here are a few ways to measure performance by asking the right questions: 

• Is your AI agent answering questions correctly? 
• Are your customers happier with your brand, product, or service? 
• Are you and your team saving time using agentic AI? 

Use these insights to improve your AI’s performance. When you’re confident the agent is working well, start letting it handle more tasks.

Challenges with the agentic layer for small businesses

There are many pros of using agentic AI, but being an SMB owner, you might face some difficulties too. But there’s always a solution to every problem. Let’s look at some challenges and solutions:

Challenge #1: Learning curve: It may be challenging to  understand how AI agents work at first, or to set it up properly, and train it to fit your business.
Solution #1: Built-in onboarding: You can learn about AI agents through step-by-step guide and tutorials, Trailhead modules, or online support and community resources.

Challenge #2: Data security: Are AI agents safe? Protect the autonomous AI agents that operate independently within ‌your CRM from risks related to data access, privacy, and misuse.
Solution #2: Security and compliance: A trusted CRM with an agentic AI layer includes data privacy, limited data access, encrypted sensitive info, and provides transparency about how data is used.

Challenge #3: Preserving the human touch: As a business owner, you might be concerned if AI agents can sound like humans or give the right responses. Or if too much automation can feel cold or impersonal.
Solution #3: Human and AI together: Let agents do the heavy lifting, but also know when to shift it to humans in the loop for personal touches. With Agentforce you can train your agent and then refine its parameters, inputs, and outputs as regularly as you need.

Challenge #4: Budgeting: ​​When budgets are tight, investing in AI tools can feel costly. Not just the initial purchase but also the ongoing expenses for maintenance and updates.
Solution #4: Cost-effective tools: Using agentic AI built into your CRM means you don’t have to buy separate expensive AI software or hire specialists. No huge upfront costs or hidden fees, just steady support that grows with your business.

Agentic AI as a growth partner for your small business

Scaling your business is easier with smart agentic AI. It helps you make better decisions and frees up your time for growth and customer connections. It doesn’t stop there — using your CRM data, keeping your data safe, and managing sales, marketing, and service. We’re here for you every AI layer of the way.

Learn how you can use AI with CRM to improve sales, service, and marketing, and boost your business growth. Get your data ready with the right tools.

Start your journey with a free trial of Starter Suite today. Looking for more customization? Explore Pro Suite. Already a Salesforce customer? Activate Foundations today to try Agentforce. (Back to top.)

AI supported the writers and editors who created this article.